


Tangled Together

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Casualty (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 21:23:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5180228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is unbelievably self-indulgent. Very sorry. Dyfty. Misunderstanding, then a start of something not platonic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tangled Together

Lofty hovers in the staffroom entrance, closing the door very carefully behind him with a soft click: Dylan is stood by his locker, forehead pressed against the cool of the metal as he takes in slow, deep breaths. Lofty hesitates, not entirely sure about stepping towards him - he’s wary of Dylan snapping at him.

He seems tired. Lofty guesses that he is.

Lofty steps forwards, but Dylan doesn’t seem to notice, eyes glazed as he stares into the middle distance, gaze defocused and aimed at his locker. Lofty reaches out and very gently, as gently as he can, puts his hand on Dylan’s arm.

The doctor flinches, his eyes widening for a second as he draws abruptly away, but then he looks at Lofty and he visibly relaxes. Lofty feels the relief in his chest, melting through him, as Dylan doesn’t slap his hand away and instead turns his head to look at Lofty’s face.

“Alright, are you?” he asks stiffly. 

“Are you?” Lofty asks in return, and he watches Dylan’s ginger brows as they furrow. He looks confused, or annoyed, maybe. Lofty presses his lips together, trying to decide what to say, and then he finally says, “You look tired.”

“Well, I am,” Dylan retorts matter-of-factly, drawing his head up. His arm is warm under Lofty’s fingers, and he doesn’t try and draw it away. Lofty is extremely aware of how little they touch each other, as a rule – they stand close together all the time, but they don’t touch each other, not even in a friendly way. But then, knowing Lofty’s luck, Dylan probably wouldn’t want a more than friendly touch aimed his way. Dylan softens slightly, then says, “I’m fine. Just didn’t get much sleep. New house boat. I’m a bit, er-” he shifts his head from one side to the other, clenching his jaw, then finally says, “Paranoid.”

“Oh,” Lofty says. He isn’t sure what else to say, so then he says, “I’m sorry. You should, um, let me know if I can help, ever.” Dylan opens his mouth, and then seems to notice Ben’s hand on his arm, and gives it a small glance, affecting Lofty to withdraw it with lightning abruptness.

“Er, no,” Dylan says, seeming to change his mind.

“You were going to say something.”

“I was not.”

“You  _were_ ,” Lofty insists, and when Dylan glares at him Lofty falters, leaning back slightly (because Dylan could yell at him easily, yell at him like everyone else seems to be doing this week, and it’s not that he’s scared as such but he honestly doesn’t like to be  _yelled_  at, he can’t handle-)

“It was ridiculous on my part,” Dylan says. “It’s nothing.”

“Were you going to ask if I could stay with you for a few days?” Lofty asks quietly. There’s colour on Dylan’s cheeks. He’s embarrassed, obviously, and he’d probably be even more embarrassed if he knew Ben actually had a bit of a _crush_  on him, but Lofty just wants to help – even if he can’t actually date Dylan, he can be his friend, and Lofty’s a good friend and Dylan  _needs_  one.

“Of course, it was silly, and I don’t-”

“I can, you know,” Lofty interrupts him before he can deprecate himself. Lofty doesn’t like to see Dylan do that. The older man stares at him,  _peers_  at him, as if trying to look right through him. “I’d like to.”

“Oh,” Dylan says. “Right. Well. Yes.” He does this, when he’s stressed, or when a situation’s awkward. All the words come out in single sentences, stunted and strange. It’s endearing, actually, but Lofty’s not going to say so. “Tonight?”

“Alright,” Ben says. Dylan is staring at him like he thinks Lofty’s hair might turn into worms, or like he thinks his skin is going to turn green, or something.

“Alright,” Dylan repeats. “See you, uh, later.” And he walks away as briskly as he can, which for Doctor Dylan Keogh is quite briskly indeed.

—

He’s been on Dylan’s new houseboat before. Just the once, when they’d eaten dinner together one night, and Dylan had gone home after – it’s a nice boat, he supposes, though he doesn’t really know anything about them at all, and he doesn’t know if it’s as good as the other one. The one he used to have.

They’d eaten Chinese in the restaurant a few streets from the riverside, and Lofty shoulders his overnight bag as they move in – it’s just got his clothes for tomorrow, his pyjamas for tonight. He doesn’t usually wear pyjamas, and feels a bit like a child carrying them, but nor did he want to sleep on Dylan’s sofa in just his boxers.

It’d just feel… Presumptuous.

Lofty’s always been a bit wary of being too presumptuous with Dylan. He seems the type to react badly to it.

Dylan disappears once they’re on the boat, into the bedroom and fussing over Dervla, and Ben changes as quickly as he can into his pyjamas before setting his bag down on the sofa. It folds out into a guest bed, he knows, and even though it’s not the most comfortable of things, he just wants to offer some kind of comfort.

“Er, Dylan?” Ben asks, and Dylan appears in the doorway from the bedroom. Lofty can’t speak. Dylan’s not wearing a shirt, now, just wearing his trousers and bare feet, and he’s staring down at Lofty with the sort of quiet, professional perplexity he  _usually_  has on his face when he looks at Lofty.

“Mmm?”

“Do you have a blanket?” Dylan looks blank.

“A blanket?” he repeats crisply, furrowing his brow again and tilting his head to the right; his lips are parted and he just looks confused. “What? Why? I’ve got a quilt. Come on.” Lofty is confused, but he doesn’t say so: he just stands, moving towards Dylan and into the bedroom. It’s about as big as a bedroom on land is, really, and Dylan has a double bed and thick, comfortable sheets. Lofty’s not entirely surprised by the fact that he’s particular about the sort of bed he sleeps in.

“A spare quilt?” Lofty ventures.

“Spare?”

“For the other bed.”

“The  _other_  bed? No, I meant  _my_  bed, us-” Lofty’s staring at him, and Dylan’s face suddenly pales under the ginger stubble – Lofty’s never seen him look so terrified, not even when Dervla was missing, but he really does, now. “You thought I wanted you to sleep on my guest bed.”

“And you meant for me to sleep with you. In your bed. And have sex.”

“In a nutshell.”

“Right,” Lofty says. Dylan looks like he might be ready to enter self-destruct mode. “Right, well-

“You can have the bed and I’ll just sleep on the spare bed-”

“I’ll brush my teeth and we can get into bed-” The both of them stop. Lofty swallows. Dylan stares at him.

“What?”

“What? I’d er, I wouldn’t mind sleeping with you.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“I’d like to, uh, in fact,” Ben rubs the back of his neck, “I thought you were straight.”

“No,” Dylan says evasively, with a shrug of his shoulders. Lofty is momentarily distracted by the way the hair grows on his chest. Not- no, not the way it _grows_. That would be a stupid thing to be distracted by. No, it’s more the colour of it – it’s auburn, but darker than the stubble on his cheeks. It’s nice. Looks soft. “Ben,” Lofty looks up. “Did you hear what I just said?”

Lofty shakes his head.

“Right, well, what I was saying was-” Lofty doesn’t let him finish. He rushes forwards, standing on tiptoes for a second and grabbing the back of Dylan’s neck to pull him down slightly, not having a shirt to grab onto. He pulls Dylan down and kisses him hard, awkwardly, actually, with an uncomfortable clash of teeth that lasts for a moment before Dylan puts his hands firmly on Lofty’s shoulders and kisses him properly, more slowly, more  _precisely_.

Dylan draws away, then, and he says, “I was saying something.”

“I thought that would make you stop,” Lofty says, because he doesn’t really feel like this whole thing is  _real_ , and he just wants to get into bed with Dylan now if he’s going to get into bed with him at all. 

“It did,” Dylan points out, looking like he might start to pout.

“Yeah,” Ben offers Dylan a small grin, trying not to feel shy about it. Dylan’s lips twitch. He doesn’t  _quite_  smile. “We just snogged,” he says, slightly dreamily. He’s imagined it, of course, but he always had imagined it with the shirt involved. He’d imagined grabbing Dylan by his collar or the front of his shirt or by the stethoscope that’s always dangling around his neck and just kissing him in the middle of the hallway, or in the staffroom, or  _somewhere_.

He’d never really thought about him being shirtless.

“You keep looking at my chest.”

“You’ve got hair.”

“You don’t?”

“Not like yours.” Dylan gives him a wry look.

“And  _how_  old are you?”

“Shut up!” Ben says loudly, and then he laughs, grinning a little; it’s easy to find himself grinning, because Dylan’s smiling, too. It’s not a big smile, not a big, wide thing, but it’s something. “Bed, then?”

“Uh-” Dylan says first, and then, “Do you always wear those pyjamas to bed?” Ben looks down at his pyjamas, which are made of blue flannel.

“I don’t normally wear pyjamas,” he admitted. “Didn’t want to sleep on your spare bed in my underwear.”

“Well, you needn’t do that at all, actually. You could take them off.”

“I could?” Ben asks, reaching for the first button of his pyjama shirt.

“You could.”

—

“How was sleeping at Dylan’s?” Robyn asks.

“Oh, it was fine,” Lofty says lightly, not meeting her eyes as he picks up a stack of papers. “Dervla laid on my legs through the night.” Only because his legs were tangled with Dylan’s, really, but Robyn doesn’t need to know that. Lofty loves her, but he doesn’t want the whole hospital to know.

“Aww,” Robyn says lightly. “That’s cute.”

“Yeah,” Ben agrees, and he walks away. He winks at Dylan as he passes him in the corridor, and he doesn’t miss the way Dylan rolls his eyes in response. 


End file.
